The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council draft resolution Saturday that sought to condemn an Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip and demand Israeli troops pull out of the territory.U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the Arab-backed draft resolution was "biased against Israel and politically motivated.""This resolution does not display an evenhanded characterization of the recent events in Gaza, nor does it advance the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace to which we aspire and for which we are working assiduously," he told the Security Council.The veto unleashed a flurry of criticism in the Middle East."This decision by the U.S. government gives unlimited cover to commit more massacres of innocent Palestinians," said Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government. "This is a shame on the American administration, which says it is trying to promote human rights and democracy in the Middle East."... http://www.chron.com

For a little more than $38 billion, the United States and its contractors in Iraq have provided 4.6 million people with access to water. They have distributed seeds to Iraqi farmers, improving wheat harvests. With electricity-generating capacity now above prewar levels, they have given many Iraqis more daily hours of power. They have repaired more than 5,000 schools and vaccinated 4.6 million children against polio.The list goes on. But as the U.S.-led, U.S.-funded portion of Iraq's reconstruction nears its end, American officials and contractors alike are grappling with a cold reality: Thousands of successes in Iraq may add up to a single failure."We accomplished a significant amount of work. But it was just overwhelmed by the overlay of violence," said Clifford G. Mumm, who has spent much of the past three years in Iraq managing projects for Bechtel Corp. "It's hard to be very optimistic."...http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/AR2006111101076_pf.html

As the results of the midterm elections sank in this week, religious leaders across the ideological spectrum found something they could agree on: The "God gap" in American politics has narrowed substantially. Religious liberals contended that a concerted effort by Democrats since 2004 to appeal to people of faith had worked minor wonders, if not electoral miracles, in races across the country. Religious conservatives disagreed, arguing that the Republican Party lost religious voters rather than the Democrats winning them. Or maybe they seen that Bush had 6 years he could have done something about Abortion, and all he done was talk about it. Also, he was so phony acting like a Christian that he made Elmer Gantry look good that they just felt ashamed that they ever fell for anything he said. It had nothing to do with liking the Democrats better, they just felt betrayed by the Republicans and their phony talk of Family Values...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15662295/

Concerned about the US government's prying eyes, a number of Canadian universities are changing the way their professors and students conduct online research. Many university libraries subscribe to RefWorks, a popular US based Internet tool that allows academics and students to create personal accounts and store research information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies. But the Patriot Act which grew out of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and which potentially allows US authorities to sweep through databases such as RefWorks has prompted Canadian postsecondary institutions to abandon the American server for one housed at the University of Toronto. “There is certainly concern within Canadian university libraries. It's a concern about a foreign country having access to your personal information without good cause,” said William Maes, librarian at Dalhousie University in Halifax. “That's the devious thing of the Patriot Act, they can do this without letting anybody know.”...http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061111.wxuniversities11/BNStory/National/home

Thousands of Chinese villagers clashed with riot police after barricading officials and foreign businessmen in a warehouse they said had been built on illegally seized land, Hong Kong media reported on Friday. Up to 10,000 people blockaded the warehouse entrance in the village of Sanzhou, near the border with Hong Kong, trapping 300 assembled dignitaries, including Guangdong province officials and Hong Kong and foreign businessmen inside, the Apple Daily said of the incident Wednesday. The protesters let out the foreigners, among them German and British citizens, but held the officials, demanding they be investigated for allegedly selling the property off to developers, the English-language paper said. Attack dogs, tear gas Around 1,000 police and riot police, some with attack dogs, arrived to defuse the standoff, but the villagers stood their ground, ...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15653408/

Bush said on Saturday his chosen new defense secretary was an "agent of change" in a sign of the growing momentum for a new direction in Iraq policy after election defeat for Bush's Republicans.Two car bombs in a Baghdad market killed eight people and Iraqi security forces were the target of several attacks around the country on Saturday as insurgents and sectarian groups kept up the pressure on the Iraqi government and its U.S. backers. The Pentagon's top general, Peter Pace, has said U.S. military leaders are preparing to recommend changes in Iraq strategy. The Iraq Study Group, led by Bush family friend and former Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, is also looking at alternative approaches. This week's surprise announcement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation followed a crushing defeat for the Republicans in Tuesday's midterm elections. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2646592